


like ghosts in the snow, like ghosts in the sun

by historic



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daryl Dixon & Judith Grimes Bonding, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Implied Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25651714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historic/pseuds/historic
Summary: "Daryl, tell meanything," Judith insists. "What did you think of my dad? What do you remember of him?""Kid, I don't know if it does you good to talk about this kind of thing," he replies rather softly, mostly for his own sake. "It must make you sad, no?"She shakes her head decidedly. "Not if it's you talking."(Or, six times in which Daryl shares his memories of Rick, and the one time Judith shares one in return.)
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & Judith Grimes, Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Comments: 22
Kudos: 103





	like ghosts in the snow, like ghosts in the sun

**Author's Note:**

> um, hello! this is not my first time writing for twd but it's the first time i actually gather up the guts to post something. here we go! this is set somewhere in season 9 but definitely before s9e15, "the calm before".
> 
> title is from my chemical romance's "the world is ugly". full lyrics go like this: _and then your face will be lost forever, we'll never be the same // like ghosts in the snow, like ghosts in the sun_
> 
>  **notice** : in the 4th part of this work, there is a conversation between daryl and connie. i tried to reproduce how they talk to each other in the show, but in case anything i wrote is inaccurate/ignorant, please tell me so!!
> 
> russian translation available [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/10323305)

_I worry that most of my own memories are water soluble._

_There are places inside me so remote the inhabitants never see each other._

— Richard Jackson, from “While You Were Away,” Asheville Poetry Review (2011)

  


_i._

"You shouldn't be out here, it's going to rain."

"You shouldn't be out here, it's going to rain," Judith echoes, her footsteps barely making sound as she follows Daryl deep into the woods. "I was bored. And I missed you, Daryl, you should visit Alexandria more, and hang out with me."

To which he replies, "Yeah right, 'cause I _love_ babysitting."

It's half a lie anyway, and both of them know it. Daryl is not great with kids because he didn't have the best of influences while growing up, and trauma is a bitch that clings to the inside of your skin in ways that one can't get rid of so easily. He would know. But Judith is an angel and has always been, and she wouldn't leave him alone even if Daryl truly wanted her to. "I mean it," she insists. "It must be lonely out here."

Daryl lets out a non-committal sound, watching as Dog disappears in the distance. He stops dead on his tracks and waits for Judith and her small legs to keep up with him before he resumes walking. "Maybe so," he replies. "But it's still going to rain."

"I know," she replies simply. Daryl looks down at her and she looks up at him, that damn hat tilted up. 

It's so big on her — it was so big on Carl and now it's so big on her. And Daryl used to think it looked stupid on Rick, stupid police hat, stupid sheriff, stupid Grimes. Now it's just too big. Judith will grow into it like she's supposed to. He'll make damn sure she does.

Which brings them back to the fact that he doesn't want her out here with those goddamn Whisperers out there. Daryl wants to turn on his heels and take her straight back to Alexandria where she belongs, but she'd most probably sneak out to find him again. 

It's just a quick, routine patrol anyway. He's got Michonne on the radio, he has everything under control. He can babysit a nine year old for one evening.

They walk in silence for an awfully long time — no walkers, no Whisperers, it's peachy. In a quick pause, Daryl cajoles her into drinking lots of water from a canteen and watches as she plays catch with Dog for a bit, reminiscences of childhood sweeping into Daryl's bones uncomfortably. He's about to tell her they need to go back when Judith looks back at him and asks: "Daryl, can you tell me something about my dad?"

He frowns. Dog drops a wood stick by his feet and he promptly ignores it, Dog barking at him in distaste for his lack of playfulness. "What about him?" he manages to ask.

She shrugs. "Anything. Something I don't know."

He's not surprised; Michonne had warned him a few days before. That Judith's been missing Rick more than the usual. Asking things. Asking things to the _wrong people_ , like Negan, of all of them. And Daryl supposes she cannot help it — Judith was born in a sick world, and everything about her birth comes back to violence, and she's lost her dad and brother, and Daryl wasn't here to see her grow up, so he doesn't know how to reply. He's not great with kids. But when Judith raises her eyebrows at him, he scratches his chin, humming.

"Something about Rick Grimes," he mutters. "Well, let's see, I think he was ambidextrous."

Judith makes a face. Daryl asks: "You don't know what's that, do you?" she shakes her head negatively. "It's when you write with both hands, among other stuff. I think he did that."

He doesn't think. He knows. And Judith replies, teasingly: "Is that _really_ the coolest thing you have to say about my dad?"

Daryl waves her off as he gets up from his spot on the ground.

"You said tell me something, not something _nice_. If you wanted something nice you could've asked and I would've told you something nice, smartass."

"Tell me something nice, then."

He stays silent for a while. Something nice about Rick Grimes, huh. He can't believe he's letting himself do this. "He was a bit of a nerd," he tells her then. "He liked History, told me he liked studying it at school. He used to read them old History books for fun sometimes."

Judith scrunches up her nose — Daryl knows for a fact that _she_ doesn't like studying, not even a little bit. "The ones at my house?"

"Yeah. He liked those."

He can almost, _almost_ see that unrolling in front of his eyes. When days were calm, when days were good, Grimes would curl up in a chair with a stupid book on his lap at night and just read it until he fell asleep. Of all things, those old and smelly History books no one had touched in years. For absolutely no reason at all — _would rather shoot myself in the head_ , Daryl would tell him, _than read one of those for fun_. Rick would watch him unfazed, bluest eyes under thick eyelashes, and he'd ask if Daryl wanted to listen instead. And Daryl knows he'd listen to him for a lifetime, had he had the chance to. _Much better this way_ , _Grimes,_ he'd say. _Let's stay this way forever, Grimes,_ he wishes he had added.

"Daryl," Judith calls, snapping him out of his memory. Dangerous place anyway. She's standing ahead, waiting for him to pick up the pace. "Let's go home. It's going to rain."

He nods. Home they go.

  


_ii._

The second time it happens, he's sitting on the steps of Michonne's front porch and cleaning his crossbow. Judith sits by his side and says: "So he wrote with both hands and liked History. What else?"

Daryl turns to look at her. Her brown hair is braided neatly, clean and soft, and he desperately tries to find something of Rick's in her face, though he knows he won't. It's rather in her heart, he thinks, but it wouldn't kill just to see a familiar mole, the slope of the nose or anything. It's an useless search, anyway, but one that he can't quite let go. He's spent six years doing so.

"What else," he repeats. "I don't know, kid. Go ask your mom. She knew him well, too."

"I already did, and she told me the same thing about you," she replies matter-of-factly. 

Of course she did. Daryl looks back at the inside of the house as if he can picture Michonne's shit-eating grin, but she's not even there. Left early for Hilltop. 

"Daryl, tell me anything," Judith insists. "What did you think of my dad? What do you remember of him?"

"Kid, I don't know if it does you good to talk about this kind of thing," he replies rather softly, mostly for his own sake. "It must make you sad, no?"

She shakes her head decidedly. "Not if it's you talking."

It's given. Judith knows how to have her way with anything, and it comes as no surprise that Daryl would do anything for her now just like he would do anything for her when she was nothing more than a tiny little thing, back at the prison, a tiny little thing that they all took care of. She is her father's daughter, after all. It's given that Daryl loves her.

"Your father was good," he tells her, because it's true. "Sometimes he was so good it pissed me off." 

She laughs: "Why?"

"Why," Daryl scoffs, looking down at the crossbow on his lap and running a finger along the string. " _Because_. He just wanted to do the right thing. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard, and it hurts people in the process."

He thinks of it — a bridge, a gun. "But it's the right thing," he repeats. "I didn't always understand it then, and sometimes I still don't, but it's the right thing. He just wanted to do the right thing, always. That was your dad through and through."

Judith hums accordingly. "Thanks for saying that, Daryl."

"No problem, kid."

  


_iii._

Judith's legs dangle from the countertop as he washes the dishes. 

Normally, he wouldn't accept an invite for dinner — but it's Judith, and it's Michonne, and he's missed both of them terribly. It'll snow soon, also, and warm food and a roof above his head will always be better than sleeping outside the walls of Alexandria. The last he could do is wash the dishes.

"Tell me _more_ ," the kid demands. "More about him. Not just a fact, but many things."

"Go bother your mom," Daryl replies, though half-hearted. 

"Go bother Daryl," Michonne retorts from where she's sitting by the table, bunch of paperwork in front of her. "He has funnier stories to tell."

"Michonne, that's—" he sighs. "Fine. But only if you dry the dishes, kid."

Judith more than happily does so. Daryl doesn't know what she'd like to hear, so he tells her that he knows. He tells her about the early days, before she was born and before Michonne was there, when they were just a bunch of hopeless people trying to survive and Rick was the hopeful guy pushing them forward. How it was meeting him for the first time, when Glenn Rhee brought this baby-faced man to camp and Daryl thought he'd hate Rick forever — and maybe he never hated him at all, though he conveniently lets that slide. Then there's Hershel's farm, the look on Rick's face when Carl got shot, the search for Sophia, and Judith's eyes as big as saucers as she listens.

The memories come to him easier than they did before. Sometimes Daryl thinks that he'll eventually forget most of it, because he refuses to think about it, but deep inside he knows these stay for good: that Rick was stubborn like a mule, that he liked to drive better than ride with someone else because then he'd have something to do with his hands, that he looked for abandoned candy in abandoned markets in abandoned towns, even though it would probably cause him a stomachache. That his hair was curly like an angel's when he grew it out. That he talked about Carl like he had hung the Moon and the stars up in the sky. That his eyes watered one time they listened to some folk tunes that he liked from a CD he had found in an old car. That sometimes he laughed when he slept.

"I didn't know that," Michonne comments, when they move to the living room. She runs her elegant fingers through Judith's hair and Daryl leans back on a chair, scratching at his beard lazily as he tries to think of anything else.

"'t was really fucking annoying," Daryl replies. "As if he wasn't enough of a problem while awake. It'd scare the shit out of me."

"Language!" Judith chimes in. "What else?"

He tries to send Michonne a look, in search of help, but she only raises her eyebrows at him, waiting as well. "I think I better get going," he says instead. "I forgot to feed the dog."

  


_iv._

That was bullshit, of course — Dog walks around Alexandria as he pleases and bothers everyone until someone gives him whatever's left for dinner, he knows how to fend for himself. Daryl presses the palms of his heels against his tired eyes and walks to the main gate, climbing up to the watchpost only to find a familiar face.

_Goodnight,_ he signs. Connie smiles happily as she greets him. _Had dinner yet?_

_Yes, thank you,_ she replies. Daryl takes a seat by her side, glad that the lighting isn't so bad that they can't see each other. His ASL isn't the best that there is, as Connie likes to tease him for, and they still rely on lip reading sometimes, as well as her little notepad. 

_You look sad_ , she says, which he understands. It's something she says quite a lot.

"That's just my face," he replies as he always does, and Connie rolls her eyes playfully, nudging him on the ribs. He tries to sign, then: _Bad night. Forget it._

Connie nods. She reaches for her notepad, writes for a bit and turns it to him. "We can talk about it if you want", it reads. 

She loves a good story, Daryl knows that. She used to be a journalist. He leans back on his palms and looks up at the night sky. At least the end of the world means they can see the stars. He turns to face her and replies: "There was this guy, he was very dear to me. I miss him."

Connie signs: _And it hurts_. He signs back: _It hurts_. "Like a bitch," he adds, to which Connie's eyes curl like half-moons. Daryl doesn't know what's so funny about him. He doesn't know what's in him for him to say it, but he adds: "I used to say he was like a brother to me. But he was..." he sighs, hands moving before he notices. _More_. _We were more_.

They stay silent for a while, Connie looking at him, him looking back at her, and then she turns back to her little notepad. Daryl contemplates the consequences of what he just said as she writes, and then lets out a chuckle as she turns the notepad to him. "Yes, that's why I lived alone in the woods. I was searching."

_You would have liked him,_ Daryl adds. _He was good. Like you are._

She smiles, and then writes some more. He squints his eyes at the handwriting and then shakes his head: "No, he's not coming back" he replies. "He's gone."

  


_v._

"It's been a while," Judith tells him. "Since dad's been gone. Sometimes I can't remember his voice. I miss it."

Daryl hums, watching as she draws nonsense on the ground with a small finger. He hasn't seen Judith draw in quite a while, and he hasn't heard Rick's voice for longer. The sun is harsh on his shoulders but he doesn't mind sitting here with her. "He had a nice voice," he replies at last. "People listened to him. He gave people hope." 

Judith nods. She cleans her hand on the front of her pants and Daryl leans in to try and make sense of the drawing on the ground, but he's never been very imaginative himself. Judith may carry a gun — Rick's Colt Python that Michonne had found in the mud shortly after the bridge incident — on her hip but she's still a child, after all, and she does what children do. Daryl hasn't been a child in a really long time, and sometimes he wonders if he was ever one at all. He adds: "He liked to sing you to sleep, y'know."

At that, her big brown eyes widen. Sometimes Daryl is grateful that she doesn't have Rick's eyes, not that it would be possible anyway. But sometimes Daryl misses those — he wishes, for one, that he could see that pair of blue eyes again. And if Judith was Rick's and she had his eyes like Carl did, it would either be a blessing or a curse. But she has brown eyes like Lori's, and she widens them at him: "I don't remember that!"

"Of course you don't, you were just a baby. And it's been so long, kid. How old are you again?"

"You _know_ that I'm nine," she replies. Daryl knows that she's nine. It's been six years since Rick is gone, so she's nine. Naturally. "What did he sing?"

He shrugs. Judith sighs audibly — she's got some nerve on her, Daryl will give her that. She's caring but she isn't sweet like Carl was, she's got something else. Witty and stubborn, like Rick. Though undeniably tender, of course, like the both of them were. Something inside Daryl's chest feels tight all of a sudden.

"Lullabies," he replies finally. "Things you sing to them babies, y'know. _Baby mine, don't you cry, baby mine, dry your ey_ es— you'd be bawling your eyes out and he'd sing, and you'd stop in that instant. You liked to hear that song." 

Judith nods. She rests her hands on her knees, small legs spreading out in front of her. She used to be this little, Daryl recalls. Smallest, most fragile and loving thing he'd ever cradled in his arms. He picks the hat up from where it's lying between them and rests it on top of her head, to which she lets out a laugh, adjusting it with her hands.

"And how do you know he did that, Daryl?" she asks, looking up at him. "How do you know I liked to hear it?"

He shrugs again, looking away at the distance. "Because I sang that for you too, kid."

  


_vi._

Sometimes he doesn't know if these memories are real.

Of course, it's not like Daryl lies to himself. But the more one recalls a memory, the more it changes to fit whatever it is that they need at the moment — a truth, bended by light, a lie, crushed under the heel of his boot. The safest memories are the ones locked away in the brains of those who can't remember, anyway, such as Judith; sometimes she tells him about her faint, faint memories of her father, ones that Daryl doesn't doubt are real. They sound so much like him. He'd take her to the garden, he'd lie with her on the grass, he'd tell stories of his grandfather. Of course, the details of it are lost, but Daryl knew him, and Daryl makes up for the missing information.

Judith is better at remembering than he is, even if her memory fails her sometimes. And sometimes he wonders if _he_ had imagined that Rick didn't like to sleep with the door to the bathroom open, of it that was Daryl himself. His perceptions of Rick Grimes and his perceptions of his own self often mingle, as that of lovers often do, but he curses that; he wishes he could remember Rick for himself, by himself. It's been so long. It hasn't even been that long, truly, but it's been so long for him. 

He always rolled up the sleeves of his shirts carefully, his eyesight wasn't all that good, he complained about the smell of pretty much every aftershave they found, he sometimes cried when he slept. He saw Tara Chambler like a daughter, he was happier when the Sun was bright enough to hurt his eyes, he still remembered the first walker he had ever encountered. It was a little girl and she was carrying a teddy bear. Her hair was blonde, like Judith's was when she was a baby. He tried to help her and she tried to bite his hand off.

The horse comes to a stop once he arrives at Hilltop's gates. There's a sad, lonely walker wandering near the crops and no one has bothered to put it down, but Daryl does, aiming an arrow right in its left eye. He gets off the horse to retrieve the arrow and looks down at the disgusting thing at his feet. He thinks of Lydia's scared face, Henry's stupid ass and the way Connie ran into that cornfield with a baby on her arms.

So many things Rick should be here to see. So many things Rick should be here to see and be mad about. So many things that would keep Rick awake at night, staring at the ceiling or with his head on Daryl's shoulder, his eyebrows perpetually furrowed until he eventually fell asleep. Daryl sighs as he plucks the arrow off the walker's head and gets to the gates by foot, pulling the horse by the reins.

  


_vii._

"Judith is smarter than you think," Michonne tells him one night as she sets a folded towel on top of the bed. 

"Never said she was dumb," Daryl replies. "She's smarter than most adults around here, that's for sure. She's your daughter, isn't she?"

To which Michonne smiles fondly, but she still has that look on her face that tells him she won't drop the subject anytime soon. She sits down by the end of the bed and Daryl feels morally compelled to drop the crossbow on top of the desk and turn around in his seat to look at her. There was a time in which they were as thick as thieves, the two of them. The feeling hasn't changed after so many years, but Daryl can't help but wonder where they stand sometimes. Time does things to the people that you care about, and it isn't always tender. Most of the time it isn't tender at all. The scars on their backs are here to say so.

"She knows, is what I'm trying to say," Michonne continues. "So there's no use in trying to be nonchalant, pretending that she doesn't."

"She's a kid, she doesn't know stuff."

"But she does. I believe you should do something about it."

Daryl lets out a sigh, rubbing a hand against his face. "Michonne, she's your girl. I don't want to intrude. It was a long time ago. He's not—"

He wants to say: _He's not coming back, Mich. You and I both know that_. But can't bring himself to do it, and either way, Michonne knows.

"Don't go around saying things you know that are stupid," Michonne responds. "She loves you, you're dear to her. You're part of her story, too. Rick would've wanted you to know that. Rick would've wanted you to be here for her."

He motions dismissively, and Michonne lets out a sigh as she gets up. From the door, she says: "Think about it, Daryl."

"I'm _always_ thinking about it. Have a good night, Michonne."

Even after Michonne is gone, he can't bring himself to clean the crossbow, or even go to sleep. He doesn't know why he agreed to stay the night— well, he knows. _Judith_. She showed her room to him and asked him some more about Rick; he told her something silly and her eyes were beaming with delight. And he should've gone to his stupid Alexandrian house to sulk alone, Dog at his feet, staring at the stupid blue walls that Rick painted himself.

But he's not there in that empty house. He's here. He remembers when they moved Judith's crib to here, alongside the History books and that wooden tile with her and Carl's small hands printed on it. Michonne hung it on the wall, because she loves them just as much. Daryl averts his gaze every time he walks past it because he can picture Rick placing his much larger palm over Carl's every morning.

_She'll miss you,_ Michonne had told him before he left. _I still don't know the lullabies she likes_.

To which Daryl had replied, _you and I both know she's better off with you_. She smacked him for it, and Daryl hugged her tight. _Take care, the both of you._

Anyways, here's to the elephant in the room. When Daryl walks out of the guest room in the morning, dressed for the day, Judith is patiently waiting for him on the other side of the door, still clad in her cotton pyjamas, her hair all messed up. "You gon' kill walkers with those slippers on?" he teases. "You best not try to run, Lil' Ass Kicker. You'll fall to your face."

She lands an inofensive punch against his thigh. "Will you brush my hair?" she asks.

"I don't know how to do that."

"But you used to," she replies. "When I was very little. I asked mom and she said it's true. C'mon, Daryl, we don't have all day."

Of course, he lets her drag him to her room. He feels stupidly out of place here, but Judith doesn't seem to agree. Her bed is messily made and she picks up a hairbrush from the dresser, gesturing to the bed when he doesn't immediately take a seat.

"Kid, I have places to go and people to see," Daryl sighs, though he does sit down. She happily sits by his side, drops the hairbrush on his lap and turns his back to him, waiting. 

It is not difficult to picture her six, seven years before. She wouldn't sit so quietly like this but she'd let him brush her hair all the same, locks lighter and curlier, picture perfect of an angel. Daryl's hands are too rough for this, has always been, he thinks as he tries to delicately comb the brush through her hair. "You best not ask me to braid it," he mutters. Judith's shoulders shake when she laughs. And because he's not a dick, he adds: "Maybe one day, though. But I'm warning you, it'll look ridiculous."

"I'm sure you'll learn with time," she replies simply. "Maybe I'll braid your hair for you, too, if you'd like. We could be matching."

He laughs as well, and Judith all but bounces on her spot, pleased with the discovery that she's funny and Daryl adores her, even if he didn't say it out loud. Her hair is thin and silky and cascades down her shoulders, much different from Rick's short curls or Carl's thick hair. He tells her so.

"I wish I had curly hair," she comments.

"I think yours is just fine," he replies, setting the hairbrush aside. Judith turns around to look at him, tucking her knees to her chest and studying him quietly. "What is it?"

Judith doesn't reply. Instead, she reaches out with a hand and touches his cheek with her small hand, thumb brushing against his cheekbone tenderly. He's so taken aback by it that he forgets how to breathe, or how to speak. 

"Dad used to do that to you," she says. "And you liked it. You didn't tell me that, I just remember it. But you could've told me anyway, because I'd like to listen all about it. About you and dad. I remember that you were there, Daryl."

He nods as she retrieves her hand. Admittedly, Daryl had blocked that out of his mind — he's suddenly reminded of the familiar weight of Rick's hand, and can't help but bring a hand to press where Judith's had been. 

"Thanks, kid," he replies. She frowns, what for?, she whispers. "'Cause I remember it, too."

**Author's Note:**

> well, here we are! i wrote this in a few hours, so it's surely not the best i could do. i hope you people liked it nevertheless.
> 
> find me on tumblr @ rickyls (side blog) or bitterosweet (main)


End file.
